Nuveen Investments Testifies before House Committee on Financial Services

Suggests Three Steps to Help Provide Relief on ARPS Issue

Nuveen Investments, a leading global provider of investment services to
institutions and high-net-worth investors, testified yesterday before
the United States House Committee on Financial Services in a hearing to
review problems and potential resolutions to the auction rate securities
market challenge.

Nuveen’s Executive Vice President, Bill Adams,
was among nine panelists testifying. Because Nuveen closed-end funds
collectively are the largest issuer of Auction-Rate Preferred Securities
(ARPS), Nuveen was invited to testify about the Nuveen funds’
approach to refinancing their outstanding ARPS as well as share its
perspective on potential steps that legislative and regulatory bodies
could take to help expedite a solution to the ARPS problem.

Adams testified that, to date, Nuveen’s
closed-end funds have redeemed or have announced their intention to
redeem nearly $5 billion of their $15 billion of outstanding ARPS.
Further, Adams stated that an important factor in the redemption of
Nuveen’s closed-end funds’
ARPS was the creation of Variable Rate Demand Preferred stock, or VRDP.
VRDP is a new form of preferred stock that includes an unconditional put
feature or liquidity backstop making it eligible for purchase by taxable
and tax-exempt money market funds.

Adams also suggested three steps that could help resolve the ARPS issue
more quickly:

The Federal Reserve should broaden the ability of banks to own VRDP in
their role as liquidity providers, and should permit banks serving as
liquidity providers to pledge VRDP as collateral at the Fed window.

The SEC should expedite and expand its consideration of relief under
the Investment Company Act to temporarily permit closed-end funds to
use debt financing to a greater extent than currently permitted.

The Treasury Department should further clarify the equity treatment of
preferred securities that include liquidity backstops, and permit not
only fixed-income funds, but also equity funds, to issue such
preferred securities.

The full text of Adams’ oral testimony as well
as Nuveen’s full written testimony is
available on Nuveen’s auction-rate preferred
resource center at www.nuveen.com/arps.

Nuveen Investments provides high quality investment services designed to
help secure the long-term goals of institutions and high net worth
investors as well as the consultants and financial advisors who serve
them. Nuveen Investments markets its growing range of specialized
investment solutions under the high-quality brands of HydePark, NWQ,
Nuveen, Rittenhouse, Santa Barbara, Symphony and Tradewinds. In total,
the Company managed $152 billion of assets on June 30, 2008.